The hand bones are the most beautiful. They scream the most when he removes them, for their fine, delicate hands have the most feeling. He finds the finger bones of women the best, fine-grained and thin. He peels back their skin and muscle layers carefully, pinning them back with gently placed clamps. They beg him, at first, to stop; the rich attempt to bribe him, as if their shiny gold circles mean anything. He regrets, deeply, that they must be awake for this. But their screams contain pain, which contains power, and he needs all he can get from them. He does try to maime them as little as possible. He is careful to only remove the bones he needs, and carefully stitches his cuts closed. Most of them faint before he finishes, slumping over in shock when they see the whites of their own bones, sticking out smooth from the curves of their muscle and tendon fibers. He also does try to help them forget, after it is all over, mostly so no one will suspect what hunts in the woods. But mostly because he does not want them to remember their fear and pain. He is also proud because he is one of the few bone jewelers who has never lost a patient; he has never had one bleed out on him or succumb to shock. If their heart slows too much after they pass out, he will revive them. Better their wails than their death. He is also swift in removing their bones, precise in his incisions; his blades are sharpened and clean; his stitches straight and careful, but swift. There is no rust on his scalpel nor dried blood on his floor. He cleans and scrubs between each person. He scours his needle and scalpel each time with scalding water. He is a bone jeweler, not a barbarian, sailor surgeon.
He is not even like his master was; his master had never cleansed and lost many patients to blood loss. Those who survived were hobbled, malformed, stitches all over their bodies, and often they died of infection days later. Their flesh rotting at the edges of their hasty, knotted, crooked stitches. Their wounds reeked of the rotten flesh inside. The skin turned red hot, then black. Their own human doctors could not save them. No, he was not so unskilled. His patients might suffer pain, and often had no idea how they lost their hand, or finger, or other bones. But their scaring was as minimal as he could make it. Their memory of him and their pain fuzzy; perhaps some of them had nightmares. Some of them, he knew, never entered the woods again. Yet, they did not die and their flesh did not rot and peel away from their bones.
He even tried to pick whichever hand they favored less. Thus their hardship in returning to their life was lessened in some small way, at least he hoped. He also tried, when he could, to not take the one in the family who worked, the craftsmen or weaveswoman. He did not want to hobble those who had no other way to feed than themselves, and have their families starve. Sometimes, he had too. Sometimes, the magic in a bones was fading too fast; the beautiful, milk glow blackening as it was sucked dry. Sometimes, his settings drained faster than he expected, a ring cracked sooner than thought, a bracelet crumpled quickly. In those times, he had to take those he could find and where, craftswoman or not, woodcutter or not. But, unlike many of his predecessors, he would not take children.
Their bones were powerful, almost dripping with peat-white magic. Their bones smelled sweet and their pain, their small, desperate screams only made their bones glow. Sometimes so much so, their whole skeleton gleamed through their skin. But he could not handle the sounds of their tiny, hiccupping sobs. He could not stomach how small his cuts had to be on their tiny hands. But most of all, they did not forget; the potions did not work on them. Most eventually came to think of their memories as strange, childish nightmares. But there had been a child, one his master had sliced open, who did survive into adulthood, who recognized the bone jeweler. It was as he meandered through some village, his hood pulled up, to hide his angular, thin face and shadow the silver-glint of his eyes. Most people who saw him almost immediately forget him and didn't really see him at all. Such was the blessing he had, given nimby by the Woodwife, so he could approach humans more easily. But, many years ago, a gnarled man, whose right hand had been removed, actually saw through the magic haze. He saw the jeweler and had pointed, gaped, screamed, and ran away. This had caught enough attention that others in the square had paused just enough to squint at him and see his pale skin and silver eyes. They had driven him out with fire and stakes. He still couldn't go near that corner of the woods, since they had scouts on the lookout for him and patrols at night. Strangely, though, they had seemed mostly concerned he would steal their young, unmarried daughters. This puzzled him greatly, because while age made some difference in the magic density of bones, marriage did not.
He did favor women, though. Partially for the fine quality of their bones, but they naturally seemed to have a higher magic density than men. He started the process by firmly tying their arm to his surgery table, palm up. Then he made two long cuts, latterly, down both sides of the hand. Once the skin and muscles were peeled and folded back, he first removed the distal phalanges, the very tip of the fingers. A few of his patients remained awake through this portion of the procedure. Those that had, stopped screaming, their pain numbingly bright and strong. They would stare at him as he would pluck each delicate bone from their red, wet flesh. He would remove the tips of all the fingers first, then the middle bones, the ones between the first and second knuckles Then the final, longest bones, the proximal phalanges. All his patients had passed out by this point. He would sigh in relief, and continue with his long tweezers and sharp scalpel to cut out the bones. He had to cut away the ligament attachments and slice apart the muscle fibers. He would move his way down to the palm, removing metacarpals, the knotted, knuckle bone. Finally he would come to the layered wrist bones, the hamate and rectangle-shaped capitate. Last and most precious, he would take the pisiform bone, the knot on the outside of the wrist. It was the smallest of the bones he took from hands or wrist. For a reason none of his people could explain, it held the most potency of any of the hand bones. Now, there were entire philosophies built around the reason for this, but the jeweler did not care. All he knew is he could make a single ring stoned with one pisiform, which could stave off hunger for another year.
There were more powerful bones in the human body, but they were deeper and larger. He had seen his master take a thigh bone, the largest bone the humans had. The man he took it from cried high wails of terror and as his leg was gouged open. His blood spurted out, following the rhythm of his fast heartbeat. He bled out in less than five minutes. The jeweler, just an apprentice at the time, had set out a rusty bucket to collect as much of the blood as he could. Blood had little magic, but in this much quantity they could get a few, small portions from it. They would mix it with a resin and seal it. Some of it, they would trade with the blood faye for potions. His master ripped both of the man's thighs open and with a saw hacked away at the thigh bones. It took them both to pull the bone free of the dying muscles fibers. The jeweler had almost vomited at the sucking sound the bones made as they were pried out. The marrow of these bones was especially potent. It was reserved for the Woodwife and her family. Its succor would ease their hunger for years. Since then, the lady and her daughters had not needed any new jewelry made, for which the jeweler was grateful. He dreaded that the Woodwife sent her message of need, and he would need to kill a man for his bones. But the jeweler did not relish the thought. In fact, he dreamed sometimes he would never have to do that task for his lady. But the magic even in marrow and the femurs only lasts so long.
The human heart contained no magic, but his master had often eaten it anyway. Especially after carving the ribs out of someone, and usually when he did this people stayed awake long enough to hear their sternum bisected. It sounded like the grind of wood being sawed. Bone fragments would fly away from the blade, landing on his master and the human. His master would then cut out their still pulsing heart and eat it raw, like a throbbing apple, in front of the human. The human was often still conscious as he did this; they would gape as they watched their heart come out, in someone else's hands. Their eyes would glaze as the heart stopped throbbing, and his master took a large, squelching bite, the human would die.
The jeweler hated this practice of his master's so much he dared question why his master did it. “Why do you do that? There's no nutrient in it."
"It makes the pale bastards squirm. Floods their bones with fear right before they die. It’s no less than they deserve.” His master had spat.
His master had thought humans were vile vermin. They were the ones who had ruined the balance. They were the reason the faye were forced into dim comers of the woods, desperately prying out bones to keep from starving or going mad. But the jeweler knew the tales, knew some of the historians who studied the matter, knew the Fading wasn't that easily explained. He also thought humans beautiful, their bones so smooth and delicate, even the largest ones. He was fascinated by how some bones as tiny as the hand bones contained more magic than the lumpy vertebrae.
He tried to make sense of which bones had more power. Beyond the thigh, the next most powerful were the ribs, then the hands. The least was the toes and knees, which were almost as useless as blood. Some human's bones also just contained more magic than others, some less. It varied somewhat by region, those living further south more imbued with the magic substance. It varied greatly by profession, and artists and craftsmen carried a lot of magic in their hands. But builders and fieldworkers carried more in their hips and ankles. A skilled swordsman had hands so magical they shimmered. It varied by gender somewhat, women generally had a thicker lining of it than men. But there were always exceptions; fathers who cared profoundly for their children had veins of magic drilled deeply through their bones, almost like another set of veins. Men who raped women, they seemed to suck the magic out of those women.
If the jeweller caught them shortly after their act of rape, he could get quite an extra dash of magic. With these men he often took more from than was needed, such as a radial bone one or an entire foot. He did not like men who took other’s magic. He knew he did the same thing but it was for survival, not to feel powerful. Indeed he kept himself on a strict regime with his own boned jewelry. He did not wear them constantly as most faye did; he could sense when the madness was creeping in. He only wore his necklaces and arm bands as needed.
No, the men who raped, took and took and took. They were like the deranged faye of the East, who had become more like hungry spiders, sucking the life out of humans. They had driven people from their land mostly because of their ferocity. The humans didn't have any exact stories, just dark rumors and the shredded bodies. Some spoke of strips of flesh hanging from trees. Others of horse and deer skeletons reassembled with knotted and mismatched bones, stalking through the shadows at night. A few had said they had even seen human skeletons dancing under the moon. But the jeweler knew this was nonsense. The human bones would have been either devoured or ground up and then used as a paste. The misassembled animal skeletons he could imagine happening; it was an ancient way of marking and guarding territory. The disjointed things had little intelligence but they could be given a set path to walk. It kept humans out and warned other faye it was claimed land. But his people hadn't used such crude things in several hundred years.
They cast glimmers around their land so most people just naturally went around it, without even realizing it. His people lived deep in the woods, where few humans ventured. There had been a few, maybe three, humans who saw through the glimmer and ventured into the Woodwife's domain. These few humans had deep magic in them, the ancient kind that breathed and moved freely. The last human like this had been born probably around 200 years ago, when he was still an apprentice. Long ago, the first human like this, they had killed out of desperation because they had been so starved that year. But it had caused the magic in the bones to rot and wither. Any faye who had eaten won the bones of that man, had slowly shriveled and died. The magic had been so potent when they killed him, the magic itself had poisoned itself against them. The other two, they had invited into their midst and had taught how to control wild magic. One of them had died in the arms of his Faye wife, never returning to humans. The third and final, the most recent one, had disappeared. He had glimmered the faye; a work of mastery they thought no human capable of since the Fading. That human they had not seen again.
No, the raping men devoured for pleasure, not sustenance. So from these he took extra. From this he ground the bones down, mixed in some silver flakes, and a bit of rosemary and honey. Then he put this in a small leather packet. He took this packet and with a little bit of glimmering and a lot of listening, he would find the raped woman. He would strongly insist she wear it at all times for a year, not even to remove it when bathing. If she did so, the memories of assault would fade. He could not undo the act or entirely block memories, but he could make the pain less. He could give the woman a small protection from nightmares and a small easing of her anxiety. It also; strangely and to his surprise, stopped other humans from blaming the woman for the act of the man. It was a side effect he could not explain. Some women even gained spouses if they had been single, or a second spouse, if they so desired.
But he suspected that had little to do with his poultice and more to do with the slight radiance bones seemed to give everyone, faye and human alike. It was a shimmer all Faye with boned jewelry had; glowing brighter the more powerful the bone. So the Woodwife and her daughters gleamed so bright they made his eyes water. But as he wore bones as little as he could, he often seemed drab and almost faded compared to other faye. But this made his passing among humans unnoticed easier. Even humans with human bone dust on them, glowed slightly. Other humans would not directly see it but knew something was different. Though, he had noted animal bones did not have the same effect.